But does this mean that over the last 20 years we have not made progress and that it will now get worse?
First the one billion figure for the hungry is an invention of the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation and the G8. It appears to be based on nothing more than a back of an envelope calculation. There is no hard evidence to support it. Indeed, the number of hungry may have already peaked and is on its way down again.
It is true that in 2007 and in early 2008 there was a fast rise in food prices and a fall off in food stocks. It was this that panicked the rich country leaders who make up the G8. There were riots in some developing countries but by and large, according to a recent report by the Institute for Development Studies at Sussex University, the impact was exaggerated. The price spikes were smaller, more restricted geographically and affected fewer commodities than was widely reported.
In fact, as the report argues, high prices were exactly what the Third World’s long-suffering farmers needed to persuade them to plant more. Indeed in the late sixties the so-called “green revolution” of improved varieties of maize, wheat and rice was pushed through by a policy of relatively high agricultural prices, especially in India.
As the report says, higher prices can also stimulate private sector investment as well as government investment. Indeed for years economists have been arguing that low world prices, often produced by heavy Western subsidies, combined with a bias by Third World governments for the urban consumer, had held back the Third World’s own agricultural revolution. We need a repeat of the policies of the 1960s. So let’s all be in favour of high prices.
Nevertheless, a significant number of small farmers – as opposed to the middle size and larger ones – will be worse off because they are often net buyers of food, not having enough land to feed themselves.
So they need a second policy – micro credit on the lines pioneered so successfully by the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. But, of course, that needs to be supplemented with cheap fertilizer, good advice on new techniques and well run cooperatives. With these tools in their hands small farmers can often become the most productive of all.
But to return to the question, are the poor getting hungrier?
In 1990 the proportion of underweight children in the Third World was 31%. By 2008 it had dropped to 26%. The progress is clearly too slow but a drop is a drop. Regionally the progress has been immense – in East and Southeast Asia between 1990 and 2008 the fall was from 32% to 18%.
It is Africa that is the problem. Progress has been so minimal that it is statistically insignificant. But even here there are signs of hope. At long last a number of African economies are surging- with an annual growth rate of 7%, 8% and more. The economic recession has hit them but not that hard. There is every reason to believe that a fast rate of growth will resume fairly quickly and with it increased tax revenues which can be ploughed into agriculture.
At the same time we are seeing a revolution in health which has a knock on effect on agriculture. A healthy farmer is a more productive farmer. The World Health Organisation reports great progress in fighting malaria, tuberculosis and diarrhea. Child mortality is falling quite fast. Life expectancy is on the rise. All this has a significant impact on the quality of rural life and production.
So let’s not be too pessimistic. If the rich nations get on with the job of abolishing their trade barriers and farm subsidies and increase aid for micro credit, seeds, fertilizer and agricultural advice the worst of hunger will be ended in our life times.
